Illustration: yoga pose

 

I have to admit this one makes me a little uncomfortable. I have not been able to find people to pose for me much, especially not acrobats or yoga practitioners who can do the sort of poses I love to draw. I have even put out ads looking for people but no one was interested.  I lended up searching through many videos online and took screen shots as reference material. I don't always use my own photos (my monster poster series is mostly from screen shots taken from the films) but I HATE not using my own photos! I know it is not exactly unknown to use the almost infinite image and video resources on the internet to find inspiration and references, but it doesn't sit all that well with me. That said, I went ahead and did anyway so I guess I was desperate enough to be OK with it for this one. 

Done in Krita, this is in keeping with my other yoga/acrobat stuff. Seriously... what exactly is the line between the two?In ant case it came together quickly once I decided I was doing it. I tried to keep out too much detail, though at full size you can see hair on his body that is invisible in smaller versions. I don't print my stuff as much as I used to, just costs too much, but I keep that in mind when I add details. 

My last drawing of the year? Quite possibly! 

Illustration: Alexandre de Sève et Saint Catherine

 

This took about 2 months to draw. Not because it was super complicated, it does have  fair amount of detail but it was more finding the time to work on in without being interrupted constantly. I need space to draw or write or animated and when there are constant interruptions I just can't do any of those things at all. 

It's not an exciting subject, I know. I like the details on the building and I walk past it pretty much every day. It contains the studio spaces for the community cable TV shows which, here in Montreal, are pretty good and given decent resources. When I lived in the States, local cable shows were  often just anyone who walked into the station and wanted to "make a show" and I mean ANYBODY could do it. They didn't  curate them at all or have any standards it seemed. There were open racists shows, mediums, talk shows... you name it. 

Photography: Herring Cove lighthouse and Provincetown MA, USA

 I was recently in Massachusetts for a week and spent a few days in Provincetown on Cape Cod, a place I used to frequent when I lived in Boston. It was very cloudy which made the day photography nice and interesting but I was hoping to get some night shots on the beach of the stars as well and that wasn't to be. That might have been for the best as I spent a day in-between tides on Herring Cove and noticed a couple coyotes were in the area but not paying too much attention to me. I found out after getting home that there have been a few attacks on the beach in broad daylight only a week before. 

One reason I went was to try and photograph a lighthouse on Herring Cove I have completely failed to capture on any of my other trips there. The last attempt I walked along the breakers to the lighthouse in a dense fog which turned out to be super dangerous and the fog was so think I got only 2 shots of a barely visible lighthouse. This time the day was great and I took the long way around and back via the beach. No one was around for miles... perfect for me. 

I got up at sunrise a few times to photograph the harbour and piers which went fine. There isn't a drastic sunrise and the sunsets, which are often amazing, eluded me this trip. 

review: Affinity Photo, designer, Publisher V2

 

The Affinity Suite of graphic design products just went for a long awaited V1 to V2 update. The last year had been quiet and missing the frequent updates and improvements of the last few years so many speculated something was up. The bizarre speculation of the company closing, or being sold to to Adobe was not founded in any reality but it was all over the place. To me, it seems there has been some obvious trolling going on to downplay this release and some people were left to speculate far too long on what was to come. A one minute teaser 5 days before the release that told you basically nothing except a new version was coming out but generated a lot of unwarranted expectations and wild theories.

What was released:

V2 of all the apps and a new, looooong awaited,  iPad version of Publisher. What happened was many of the missing features people have wanted were implemented in all three apps. Not all of them, of course, and it is 100% normal to wait a long time only to find that something you need for your work wasn't in the update very disappointing. Designer and Publisher got the most love but the whole suite got a nicer interface that bled over to the iPad. Many of the key features like the style eyedropper were added to all the apps and Photo got non destructive RAW editing and new versions of some features that were somewhat poorly done in the previous versions. All of the apps were elevated to much higher professional level. The "big surprise" was not a D.A.M. but a universal licence that let you install all three on windows, Mac and iPad under the same license and a ridiculously low price considering improvement and updates will be free until V3 comes out which will likely be 2-5 years away. 

The good stuff:

Designer's vector warp tools, a criminal omission in V1 were implemented. Also they added a shape builder function and knife tool. Photo got some nice masking improvements and new features and the before mentioned non destructive RAW processing. Publisher, the newest app needed the most work and got it. A book function that lets you organize separate external files into one project, style dropper, automatic page generation when importing a long text file or many images. Publisher on iPad has the same studio link function as the desktop, which lets you simply turn Publisher into Photo or Designer with a simple button to work on graphics and never have to leave the app. We can now realistically work from an iPad for everything most graphic designers need with the exception of epub and web design which Affinity has shied away from, at least for now.

The disappointments:

Digital Asset Management is really the missing piece in the suite and some of the new Publisher features do not work on iPad. iPad also has a terrible font system for publishing. I have to add one font at a time with a 3rd party program that takes a couple minutes for each one - if it works. Many graphic designers need over 600-800 fonts on a desktop system to pick from. This is something Apple will have to address. Designer would profit greatly from a bitmap to vector tracing function as many artists use that in their workflow, a vector eraser and the ability to warp a shape inside another shape (like a word or words inside a heart for example) would fill out it's feature set nicely. I wish there was some way for plugins to work on the ipad and be better implemented on the desktop. 

Overall this was an AMAZING release that added many of the features users have been asking about for years. This is not the last update, something I think many don't take into account, and Serif has been responsive to customer needs more than most companies - even if it takes them longer to realize those needs it has been worth the wait. 

Animation: The Solar System 2022 by:Vincent-louis Apruzzese

 

I did not want to go an entire year without animation something. I have several space mini-docs planned but this was the easiest to pull off bit by bit over the last few months as the research was minimal and I already have decent models of the entire solar system made. I learned a different way to handle the atmospheric haze over planets that worked out well and it is just good to keep doing something as I forget the basics easily when I haven't done something in a long while.

I have been more confident to use Garage band to make my own music. It's not exactly Gerry Goldsmith but it works and it's something that I can do myself and have no copyright worries. 

Poster Illustration: Mothra

 Mothra was maybe my least favourite of the giant monsters as a kid but this was fun to paint. For some reason I drew her on a HUGE canvas, like 60 inches wide and then inserted her in another project to add the graphics and words. It's a different format than all my other monster posters but so what? I originally was going to crop out most of the wings she could be in a close up on a vertical canvas but it seemed a waste of all the work I did. 

illustration: feuille/leaf 2022

 Another in my apparently ever growing series of leaf drawings and paintings. I started this last week while at my parents' house but didn't get very far. Mostly is helped me calm down and get to slept night. It also let me try out my mini tablet the b/f gave me for my laptop so I could paint in Krita while away and use for photo retouching. I got the shape right but wasn't too precise with the colour and details. 

Illustration: Cirque Kikasse 02

 This turned out to be one of my favourite drawings in a while. It's more dynamic than some more recent illustrations and I think the clothing came out nice. I hope this cirque troop comes back next year, I would love to take more reference photos and see them again. 

Illustration: Bay Window, rue Wolfe

 

This was originally going to be a Krita project, showing how decrepit the bay window is on this building. The brick was all redone but the window is rotting away. I even started painting it but then decided on another direction and did the drawing in Affinity Designer. Designer is a vector drawing program, not bit map, like Affinity Photo of Photoshop. With them you paint with pixels but vector is more like building an image with shapes - almost like using cut outs for each part. Every piece is its own layer and the image can be made as large or small are you like with no loss in quality. 

So this way of doing it didn't make it impossible to get that rotting look but it doesn't really lend itself to that so I kept some odd angles to the bay but for the most part made it look much more attractive than it is. There is a small tree in front I drew, then deleted because it took away from the facade. I really liked adding the shadows and I think they give it a very natural look I wasn't expecting in a vector drawing. 

Topaz Photo AI and DXO Photolab 6 (with DXO Viewpoint 4)

 Topaz Labs which makes the apps I use for denoising, sharpening and enlarging photos released a new product which, a nice surprise, was considered included with the apps I already had so I got to download it for free. It's basically a more automatic and less powerful version of the other apps rolled into one. 

I would say it's a great product, it's easy and does pretty much what you need for most photography issues that are not extreme in nature. You can quickly take away pixel noise, sharpen the image and enlarge it in one place instead of three apps. The other software isn 't useless, it's more powerful and when you have a very low light situation or and old photo that is too small to use or too blurry it can make them relevant again for print or other work. If you don't have the other products, this would be a good way to get the basic benefits of Topaz AI without spending a lot of money or taking up space on a laptop. 

DXO Photolab is my "Lightroom" replacement or to be honest, my Adobe Bridge replacement since I never used Lightroom. It's limited compared to the Adobe products in how many formats it can handle... basically just JPG, RAW and Tif and I think this new version has some ability to open video but I haven't looked into that yet. Version 6 sees an update the denoise function which was already maybe the best out there. I also added the DXO Viewpoint add-on which integrates itself  into the normal functions of Photolab and can be opened as a stand alone. The update price, in CAD, was 150$ and money not well spent. 

It's not the the software hasn't improved or that Viewpoint is't great to have integrated directly into the workflow. The problem is the updates are mostly minor and Viewpoint is pretty much identical to the NIK plugin that does the same thing, in the same way but only as a standalone app. I should have know better since the last couple of NIK updates were not worth the price either. 

If you don't have any of the DXO/NIK products I highly recommend them but the updates, while arriving often, are not anything to pay more for. The NIK plug-ins are just updated to the new interface, a fantastic interface, but you are paying for a full upgrade for only a couple of them and then again a year later for a couple more. That should have been done in one paid update to be worthwhile. 

IN USE all this stuff is great.The photo above was taken on my morning ride on my far from great iPod touch phone. I was able to improve it to the point it could have been taken with my DSLR, something ithtthat I do not always have with me on rides. 

Portrait: Elizabeth and Alex

 

Elizabeth and Alex are the children of previous portrait Jeannette. I thought both together would be a nice challenge. It went through a few changes. Elizabeth's arm around Alex's neck was drawn in then erased because it looked odd and Jeannette did not want the name of the school on Alex's shirt so that had to go. 

The changes were done really quickly as they were not in any place with a lot of detail and non e of them were important to the overall composition. 

Illustration: linge: Möbius Meadows

 This was done as challenge. I used Sketchbook with only 2 paint brushes and one dry brush. The paint brushes act like real ones for the most part and it felt a little like oil painting. I painted each laundry item on a separate layer to avoid confusion but i merged them together when I was I done. Not having to worry about only have 4 layers on the iPad anymore was very freeing. Despite using the app for a decade I have never tried colour in it for some reason. 

I did a sketch and took reference photos at Möbius Meadows Farmstead in the spring. The laundry was strung up in the glassed in porch which gets really hot, even in winter so they dry quickly and I thought it might be interesting to paint it. My friend who owns the farm really liked it and said I turned his laundry in art! His name is Art as well so that always sounds confusing to me. 

Click for a larger image to see more detail. 

Illustration: homme assis dans le parc

 

Painted in Krita with a little work done in Affinity photo fr iPad while I was away this weekend. I was taking photos of a friend getting greeted by my dog in the park and saw this guy sitting at table and decided to draw him. I actually don't like the idea drawing him without permission even though he was in a public park and you don't see his face. It's completely legal but I would rather ask bit I am not comfortable doing that either!

I liked the idea of drawing a figure in more of a setting and him at a table seemed like good practice. Another thing I liked was, though he is pretty muscular his back was reflecting a lot of light so it wasn't deep shadows exaggerating his definition but looked much more relaxed. I also like yu can't see what he is doing and that sort of "mystery" intrigues me in a composition. 

Portrait: Jeannette

 

Another friend series portrait done. This wasn't the best reference I ever took so I had to really work and modify things to get it looking right. I haven't done long hair in a while so I used my old technique of laying down guide lines to show the general flow and filling in from there. She was fresh out of the pool when I took the reference photos so a little dishevelled and no makeup which I think adds to the naturalness of her expression. I also forget everything I wrote in a previous post apparently and did it in Procreate. 

portrait: Denis

 I took some very unposed photos of my friend Denis to use in making portrait. He hasn't said he hates it so I am going to go with he is OK with it. I am. I think it came out well. It think the resemblance is there and it's got some expression and emotion in it. (He was getting jumped on by my dog at the time.) 

I used Sketchbook Pro again and the ink brushes really work for me. I have had some problems with Procreate and the ink brushes on portraits so I think I'll stick with this for people and procreate for some other stuff. Its really the stipple work that looks much better I think. I used my 3 shades techniques for the hair, something I have been doing for the last few portraits. Most of my friends have grey, white or some combo of that hair now and the three tones, a black, white and grey give the hair more life over just black lines. Maybe it's a phase I'm going through. 

Software: Sketchbook Pro and Procreate

 Lately I have been using Sketchbook Pro a lot more. I had almost thought that I would be using Procreate exclusively on the iPad and forgetting about Sketchbook but as I got back into ink portraits, I found I liked Sketchbook's ink brushes much better and while the interface is weird, no double tap to undo for example, I would it handled palm rejection perfectly and the button that moves pretty much everything out of your way while drawing was super helpful. It also lets you transfer over to the desktop version and I really appreciate that. I finish off most of my drawings on the 27 inch 5 k iMac because it's suck a great image and the size lets me really see any problems. 

Procreate has been really good with architectural drawings, the way it handles making straight lines is far superior to Sketchbook which uses a visual ruler you drag the pencil along to make a straight line, it also has other tools to visually make shapes with. It's very much like using those plastic shapes I would draw with on paper back in the day... cute, traditional but also an extra step or more. Working in colour with Procreate takes some getting used to and I'm not there yet but I find it easier than Sketchbook. The interface is a little in the way at times but it takes advantage of the iPad Pro power in ways other programs haven't yet. 

It seems like I'll be using both for the time being. Sketchbook is now owned by users who took it over from Autodesk and they have been making improvements especially on the desktop version including really nice new brushes. If i can get my head around colour workout it the fact I can go between iPad and desktop might convince me to put Procreate on the back burner, but I am nowhere near there yet. 

I like to work with the least amount of applications possible so I don't have to learn a million things keep track of a million updates, not to mention the cost (though Procreate is one time fee and Sketchbook is free) but I also want to use the best tool for the job so for now these are my iPad preferences and Krita is my desktop preference. 

Illustration: Commercial Union Assurance - Montreal

 

Another architectural drawing, this time a view of a street on the way to where a couple of good friends live. I wanted shading, unlike the last time when it just line work. It was the end of the day and I really liked the shadows and light on the buildings so I worked it into the line drawing with greys. 

It took awhile to draw this but it's not as precise as it looks are first. The farthest buildings pretty sloppy in fact, but it's more natural looking  that way. I also took out a TON of details I though were in the way like street signs and traffic lights. I think this part of my itch to do more "full" drawings and not isolated people or objects. 

Cask of Amontillado at another film festival!

 

 My animated film, The Cask of Amontillado" at the Serbest International Film Festival (SIFF) in Moldava September 5th! 

Thanks Always to the two Mikes, Mike Luce and Michael Z Keamy for their voice work! 

Illustration: Tobias Blaine Allen

 

Click to see larger version.

I have been trying to do portraits of these close to me lately and it isn't always easy. For one thing, almost no one wants me to do them. They seem to like the finished artwork and you might think after a couple of them get good response my other friends would be more open to it. Nope! So asked my good friend Toby who is an artist in New Mexico to pose, but wasn't sure how I could get to see him to take reference photos. He offered to take them himself and while I'm not usually good with that, he has done enough self portraits and I was able to look at what he did and request changes. A good photo often does not make a good drawing for some reason so there was some back and forth and I finally settled on what I wanted to do. 

Another advantage is he is a better artist than I will ever be and gave really solid feedback as I worked on it. He is the first and likely the last to request "more wrinkles please".  The portrait looks better the more you enlarge it, I think. The stipple work gets lost on smaller screen images. 

I went further with shading than I have wanted to at Toby's suggestion and it does work. It's mostly stipple and line with some solid greys and white pencil for the beard and hair. Drawn in Sketchbook Pro this time. 

Illustration: Model in profile

I have been itching paint something in colour again for a while in Krita. I finally got some time to over theist week or so. It took a longer time than normal to sketch it out... the fingers were a confusing mess but also what I thought made it more interesting. 

I did my current technique of a solid colour silohuette and then added blocks of colour for shading and highlights, getting more detailed each pass until it looked ready to blend the colours into more natural tones. This seems to make it go quicker, maybe because this approach lets me see problems before doing tons of details and having to redo them. 

The guy wasn't the best of people, to be honest, but he made a decent model. He knew what he was selling but made the mistake of thinking everyone was looking to buy it. 

portrait: Luc-Alexandre

 I took not enough photos at pride this year but did sneak in some I thought I could use for portraits. This was the only one I think that was good enough for that. My boyfriend did not think it look like Luc at all, then again he assumed it was a portrait of him at first for some reason. I decided to show it to Luc-A anyway and he really liked it so I guess its OK. This one has more shading than I would usually use in a mostly pen and ink drawing but without it, it was just a lot of white face with little dimension to it. 

Portraits: Mom and Dad

 I was inspired after talking to my friend Mike after he did a portrait of his father a while back. Both my parents are in poor health and I decided that if I didn't do portraits of them now I likely never would. 

My mom's portrait was the most difficult. Her poor health has changed her dramatically. I took some reference photos while visiting her last but I changed a lot for the portrait. I wanted to draw her recently but not emphasize her current state so much. It isn't who she is so I took some liberties and came through with something those who know her would recognize as her. 

My father's portrait was easier, I took his photos the same day and while I did concentrate on his smile over his wrinkles, it's very much him all the way. I used a multi toned technique for his hair which I think worked out well.

I won't lie, these were emotionally hard to make and in a way that is why I did them. It hard to see them age and change and doing a portrait means looking at every detail and facing it. I got some really needed advice from (now New Mexico artist) Tobias Blaine Allen who really pointed me in the right direction with the shading in particular.  I drew these in a way that they could be put together as one image if I decide to print them like that. 

While I did most of the work in Procreate on the iPad, I did the shading and finish work in Affinity photo to take advantage of my 27 inch 5k screen. 

Illustration: Birdhouse, Möbius Meadows Farmstead

 A rare occasion where I was excited seeing this come along. I am really happy with the painting technique I used and the realism of it. its not a complicated subject which is maybe why I think it worked out so well. 

I painted this in Krita and it really reminded  me why I love to use the program. I blocked out all the colours first on different layers and then added painted details little by little to get the aged wood effect with different colours.

illustration: bâtiment, Vieux Port Montreal

 

I love that I can draw in as little as five minute increments and get something done over a couple weeks with the iPad. I wanted to do something very "architectural" and I think this qualifies. I debated adding the  trees in front but Im glad I did. I also like the no shading all line look. 

illustration: Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

 

This was a difficult project to figure out. I started it in January. I wanted to do a a landscape and took a bunch of reference photos on Cape Cod last December hoping got get something I could paint as a practice. I settled on an image of the dune with the clouds prominently featured and the shoreline far below in the distance. I painted and repainted the clouds until I did not hate them. The dune itself was lots of grass and sand - LOTS of grass.... I was really hating it until I had painted enough of the grass to show what it would look like finally filled in. 

As it went along I realized there was zero, sense of scale. Was the dune several feet or many stories high? It was, in fact, many stories high and the shoreline in the corner did not emphasize that in in any way. I also decided to let myself get sloppy with the details as I got towards the bottom of the painting so the point of interest was more towards the top of the dune. That was also not satisfying and I looked through more references and saw some had people walking up the side of the dune. I decided to add a figure on top or maybe on the right side. It was December and everyone there was in winter coats but since you also could not tell what season it was I posed a 3D character from a short film that took place on a beach, lit him and used that image to paint from, ultimately putting him on the upper left top - which seemed dramatic enough. The scale isn't far off, in reality he would be a little smaller but I did not like how that looked. 

So I think it looks Ok but it's still basically a failed landscape painting in some ways. 

illustration: Art, mais 2022 @ Mobius Meadows Farmstead

 I did a trick my friend Mike Luce uses and took some reference photos in a sneaky way so I could do a portrait of my friend Art on his farm in Vermont. Mike does it to get more natural poses and I did it because no one wants to pose for me. I still would like to have done portraits of most of my friends so this stealth method might just get me there, eventually. I wasn't going to show this if he was mad i did it or did not like it and he wasn't and he did - so here it is. 

This is in the style of a portrait I did in December of my friend Keamy and my plan is do all the friend portrait like this. I used Procreate since I can draw anywhere and when I have a few minutes. 

Illustration: granges, Colchester Vermont

 Another one I wanted to use only black line work on. These two barns are down the street from Mobius Meadows farmstead where I like to spend as much time as I can. I see them all the time and never bothered to draw them until now. I thought about putting in the trees behind the barn but I think they would have made the illustration too dense and would have taken the point of interest away. 

Illustrations: Mount Royal & bird house(Vermont)

 A structure on Mont Royal got my attention a month or 2 ago and I started drawing it about 3 weeks ago. I was able to get a lot done while waiting 3 ½ hours at the bus terminal for a late bus ride to Boston Thursday and then I did the rest while staying with my dad. Used a greyscale technique with some highlights to show more depth. 

The second drawing a bird house at Mobius Meadows Farmstead in Vermont I did a quick sketch of while there and took some reference phots and got some of it finally inked in while I was sitting with my mom in hospital a few hours Friday afternoon. I then finished it waiting for the bus to take me home. This was all pen strokes except for the watercolour splash in the background. I didn't want to use any additional "tricks" like grey areas or white pencil, just line. 

Festival nomination: Cask of Amontillado

 My animated Poe tale, "Cask of Amontillado" was nominated a the Cannes Shorts festival! 

You can see the film on Youtube, be sure to subscribe and like the film! 

Game: Myst 2021 by Cyan Games

 

I sort of promised myself I wasn't going to buy Myst again... I have bought it several times now as it got updated over the decades and was happy enough to have it on my iPad and get to play the "new age" Rime in that version. I am not a gamer as anyone who knows me will tell you but I LOVE the world of Myst and the visuals. I bought Obduction and will be getting Firmament when it is released, supposedly the end of this year.

Was it worth another purchase? It was on sale on Steam and I could not resist. The graphics were really amazing and game play was smooth and so good I don't think I can play on the iPad again because the look of the 2021 version is just that good. 

The new version has some interesting differences in navigation and some of the puzzles. This seems to be to allow for limitations in the VR version (financial note to self: MUST NOT BUY). There was a big disappointment at the end for me, however. The Rime age was not included. I have read they are planning to add it in a update so I will look forward to that, but I won't lie it was a sad surprise to see it was missing. 

* Additional note: The second Myst game, Riven, is apparently under development with a new updated version as it was maybe the best in the series I am surprised it hasn't been done already. There were human characters and strange creatures walking around in that one and I really would like to see how that looks if it is anywhere near the quality of this update. 

Photos: Mobius meadows farmstead

 After not being to the farm for  2 ½ years, I was finally able to go back and see my friends and walk around in the great outdoors. The alpacas still let me pet them which was nice and I was able to take some photos at the farmstead and at the river across the street.